A senior Bolton councillor has shared the devastation caused by Hurricane Ian, one of the USA's most powerful storms.
Cllr Andy Morgan told The Bolton News how he had to flee to escape Hurricane Ian while on holiday in Florida.
The hurricane made landfall on Wednesday, with Cllr Morgan leaving the area on Monday.
About 2.5 million people had been ordered to evacuate south-west Florida before the storm hit the coast with maximum sustained winds of 150mph.
Hurricane Ian left a path of destruction in south-west Florida, trapping people in flooded homes, damaging the roof of a hospital intensive care unit and knocking out power to two million people before aiming for the Atlantic Coast.
It has been described as one of the most powerful storms recorded in US history.
Cllr Andy Morgan – who represents Heaton and Lostock - was on holiday on Sanibel Island when he was told to evacuate on Monday (September 27).
He managed to make it to his friends' condo in Naples.
But him and his friends were left without power.
Speaking before the hurricane made landfall, Cllr Morgan said: “All shops, businesses, government buildings, schools etcetera are all closed, and many businesses and homes are boarded up.
“We feel safe where we are, but conditions are deteriorating, and the next few hours are crucial. We sit and wait.
“The anticipation and waiting for Hurricane Ian to hit is immense.
“Power is starting to be a little erratic which means WiFi etc keeps dropping.”
He shared dramatic pictures with The Bolton News of the area where he was staying which is almost underwater.
Cllr Morgan also explained that when he went out for provisions, he saw highways pooling water and cars aquaplaning.
One of the strongest hurricanes to hit the United States barrelled across the Florida peninsula overnight on Wednesday, threatening catastrophic flooding inland, the National Hurricane Centre warned.
The centre’s 2am advisory said Ian was expected to emerge over Atlantic waters later on Thursday, with flooding rains continuing across central and northern Florida.
In Port Charlotte, along Florida’s Gulf Coast, the storm surge flooded a lower-level emergency department in a hospital even as fierce winds ripped away part of the roof from its intensive care unit (ITU), according to a doctor who works there.
Water gushed down on to the ICU, forcing staff to evacuate the hospital’s sickest patients – some of whom were on ventilators — to other floors, said Dr Birgit Bodine of the HCA Florida Fawcett Hospital.
Pleas were also posted on social media sites, some with video showing debris-covered water sloshing toward homes’ eaves.
Hurricane Ian turned streets into rivers and blew down trees as it slammed into south-west Florida on Wednesday with 150mph winds, pushing a wall of storm surge.
Ian’s strength at landfall was category four and tied it for the fifth-strongest hurricane, when measured by wind speed, to strike the US.
Ian dropped in strength by late Wednesday to category one, with 90mph winds as it moved overland.
More than two million Florida homes and businesses were left without electricity, according to the powerOutage.us site.
And nearly every home and business in three counties was without power.
The governors of South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia and Virginia all pre-emptively declared states of emergency.
Forecasters predicted Ian will turn toward those states as a tropical storm, likely dumping more flooding rains into the weekend.
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